LASTLINE REVEALS PREDICTIONS AND TRENDS FOR THE 2018 CYBERTHREAT LANDSCAPE

Nov 21, 2017

Company predicts continued rise in cybercrime will be met with advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning as emerging methods to counteract attacks

Lastline Inc., the leader in advanced network-based malware protection, today released predictions and trends for the 2018 cyberthreat landscape. As in recent years, 2017 saw an increasing number of cyberattacks, and indications point to another tumultuous year in 2018. With companies storing more data in the cloud and the number of Internet-connected devices rapidly increasing, the appeal and opportunity for cybercrime continues to escalate.

However, technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have produced significant new products to combat cyberattacks, and these defense mechanisms are expected to continue to emerge throughout the new year. Lastline has issued a report on its 2018 predictions and trends, which can be viewed here.

“Cybercrime’s impact will be huge in 2018,” said Giovanni Vigna, Lastline co-founder and CTO. “The ever-increasing attack surface is already so large that the limited cybersecurity resources found in most organizations are unable to keep up with the onslaught. Fortunately, the cybersecurity industry is vigorously fighting back with advances in resiliency and automation technologies like ML and AI. During 2018, organizations will increasingly use these methods to defend themselves from cyberattacks.”

Lastline’s Predictions and Trends for the 2018 Cybersecurity Landscape are:

Cybercriminals Get More Sophisticated—Developing Multiple New Ways to Attack Their Victims – In 2018, expect to see a dramatic increase in sophistication among cybercriminals, even entry and mid-level hackers, as they leverage AI and ML-powered hacking kits built from tools that criminals leaked or stole from state-sponsored intelligence agencies.

Malware Invades Hardware at Increasing Rates – 2017 saw an increased amount of malware attacking the firmware and memory of hardware devices like disk controllers, fingerprint sensors, and computer cameras. As most malware detection products can’t identify malware on hardware, expect hackers to increasingly turn to this type of attack during 2018.

The Cyberattack Surface Expands Exponentially – In 2017, Android surpassed Microsoft as the world’s most popular operating system, giving cybercriminals a good reason to expand their number of attack points. To countless Microsoft and Android platforms add the strong growth of iOS-based systems and billions of new Internet-connected devices, and the resulting expanded attack surface is so extensive it’s hard to fathom.

Giant Leap in Adoption of Security Oriented AI & ML – Enterprises face millions of cyberthreats every day, and it’s virtually impossible for even a large staff of human security analysts to process all of the data and manually evaluate each security incident or alert. AI and ML are particularly suited to solve these problems and a significant leap in their adoption in 2018 is expected.

Security Automation Becomes a Primary Objective – With the escalating number of cyberattacks and limited resources to fight them, expect to see organizations start to automate as many cybersecurity functions as possible during 2018. ML, AI and outsourcing will be used to do much of the heavy lifting, freeing human cyber teams to focus on things that can’t be fully automated

Cybersecurity Augments Prevention with Resiliency – In 2018, instead of focusing primarily on breach prevention, organizations will begin in earnest to invest in breach containment and rapid recovery to beef up resiliency. These tools will quickly detect breaches, isolate infected assets and network segments, and rapidly restore damaged data and systems.

For an in-depth look at Lastline’s Predictions and Trends for the 2018 Cyberthreat Landscape, see our full report.